


As the Flames Close In

by Morning66



Category: Keeper of the Lost Cities Series - Shannon Messenger
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24576703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning66/pseuds/Morning66
Summary: The first time Jolie meets Brant, they are both six and too innocent to see the cracks forming in their world.
Relationships: Brant/Jolie Ruewen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	As the Flames Close In

**Author's Note:**

> This is kinda sad. Sorry!!

The first time Jolie meets Brant, they are both six and too innocent to see the cracks forming in their world. They lock eyes over a gremlin pen at Claws, Wings, Horns, and Things, turquoise meeting a blue that is not yet icy. He offers the gremlin to her, she informs him that they'll be sharing.

( _Maybe in another world, there is hope for these two children. Maybe in another world they grow up with love and acceptance, as opposed to shame and isolation. Maybe in another world they have an infinity together. This is not that world._ )

At nine, Jolie hides on the stairs one night long after she should be asleep, listening to her parents' hushed voices. When she hears them speak of a possible engagement one day between her and Brant, her heart flutters. As she falls asleep that night she imagines it, the two of them married and grown with abilities, surrounded by friends and family.

( _One day they will be engaged, but it won't be the engagement she had hoped for. Her parents will frown, their friends will look away, ashamed, and people on the street will jerk back, as if they're monsters_ )

Jolie and Brant are eleven when they start Foxfire, excited and hopeful for the future. Edaline takes a picture of them standing in front of Havenfield, dressed in their uniforms, grins hopelessly naive. Jolie frames the photo and keeps it at her bedside, taking it with her when she moves from Havenfield to the Elite Towers to her own house.

( _By the time the photo burns up in the flames, crackling and melting into ashes, it's all that's left of those children, who've been molded and twisted, hardened by the world around them._ )

Jolie is fourteen the first time she kisses Brant, perched on her bed, the smell of her mother making custard bursts wafting upstairs. His hair is wet and messy against her face because he just came from another failed session with the tutor his parents hired to detect an ability. They close their eyes when they kiss, pretending his aren't stained red from crying. They're just starting to lose hope in their world, but at least they have each other.

( _The last time they kiss, just hours before the fire, it will be bitter and hard, filled with anger and deception that at fourteen they can't even begin to comprehend.)_

Jolie is fifteen when Brant comes to her, blue eyes wide with fear, and tells her there is something much, much worse than being talentless. She asks him what, but he just shakes his head and buries it in his hands. She doesn't press, just hugs him tight and wonders if this is about not being able to do the Elite Levels at Foxfire.

( _It's not, of course. Jolie will remember this moment as an eerie yellow-orange haze surrounds her, wondering if things might have been different if she'd only pressed him harder that day about what was bothering him._ )

When she is sixteen, Jolie gets her last list from the Matchmakers. She holds it in shaking hands, stares at the fancy script at the top: Final Alternatives. She reads it three times, just to be sure that Brant's name isn't on it, even though she knew it wouldn't be. When she finishes, she pulls her knees right to her chest, but doesn't cry. Her path has just become impossibly harder, but it is her path and take it she will.

( _Maybe, just maybe, hard paths are made to save people, to make sure they don't burn alive, alone and afraid._ )

When Jolie is seventeen, she gathers as much courage as she can and tells her parents she loves Brant, that he's the one she wants to marry. She sees the sadness, the disappointment on their faces and prays it's not directed at her, but toward their society. They give her an ultimatum and she fights them, tears streaming down her face, but in the end, she agrees.

( _Lifetimes later, the Ruewen's will watch as another daughter is ruled unmatchable and remember this night._ )

Jolie is eighteen and lonely, no real friends except the letters Brant sends her, when she joins the Black Swan. While she swears fealty, she thinks of herself and Brant, of her aunt and uncle, of all the people who live outside the strict expectations of the Council and suffer for it. It doesn't take long for the cube to decide she's sincere.

( _Even as she takes her dying breaths of smoky air, Jolie doesn't regret her choice, or the Black Swan's mission. Just because her and Brant didn't work out doesn't mean the Council is right._ )

Jolie is eighteen and she can't breathe through the smoke. The fire is all around her, burning so, so, so bright. She screams out for Brant, but he doesn't save her, doesn't help her. Tears run down her soot covered face, not because she's scared of death, but because the man she loves is responsible. "How could you?" She screams "I thought it was us against the world!"

His icy blue eyes are the only cold thing around as the fire closes in.

( _Maybe in another world they worked together, recognizing that they both wanted the same thing. Maybe in another world they were honest with each other from the beginning. Maybe in another world their fate wasn't fire and insanity. This is not that world._ )


End file.
